


Sore Loser

by enjolras_lexa



Series: Brakebills and Further (Q/E) [1]
Category: The Magicians (TV), The Magicians - Lev Grossman
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Based on a Tumblr Post, Card Games, Confident Quentin Coldwater, Firefly References, First Kiss, Fluff and Humor, Getting Together, M/M, POV Eliot Waugh, Quentin Coldwater Lives, Romantic Fluff, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-07-27 16:35:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20049148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enjolras_lexa/pseuds/enjolras_lexa
Summary: Quentin beats Eliot at cards. Eliot thinks he's cute.





	Sore Loser

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Based on [this post by @coldwaughtered](https://coldwaughtered.tumblr.com/post/185865985626/a-concept-q-and-eliot-playing-cards-and-quentin) if you want to check them out
> 
> 2\. [the rules for the card game they're playing](https://www.adda52.com/blog/how-to-play-seven-cards-rummy)
> 
> 3\. This is a weird mixture of book and show canon. Also Q deserved better but I'm preaching to the choir here.

“_AHA!”_

That was the triumphant sound of Quentin’s gloating victory battle-cry as he won the third game of rummy in a row.

Very apt for a former expert on what Penny called Muggle magic tricks (it had yet to be pointed out to Penny that his cutting way of making fun of Quentin for being nerdy was, in itself, very nerdy. Bambi was planning on doing the honours. It was promising to be absolutely _legendary_). It was also getting on Eliot’s nerves. Okay, fine. It made him enraged.

“Fucking shit Coldwater.”

They were killing time while the other two rulers, Julia and Margo, were off on some sort of quest. The Seeing Hare had sent them, Eliot hadn’t asked questions. The queens of Fillory were normally pretty efficient about that sort of thing.

Now Eliot liked to think that he was pretty uncompetitive when it came to games. They just weren’t fun. Ever. At all. Welters only aroused his boredom and jaw-dropping indifference, and by extension his distaste of all sports. He had never participated in a Family Game Night, and wouldn’t have cared who won if he had. He didn’t watch game shows or sporting events (see above), and he just generally never cared who won what unless it was the Tonys or the Oscars (and even then he didn’t normally get very invested, except for Falsettos. Falsettos had been robbed). However, Quentin having defeated him thrice in a row was starting to get under Eliot’s cool, practiced composure. His inner Margo-the-welters-goddess was coming out. 

In other words, losing blew.

Eliot grimaced. He had started out sitting with one leg primly crossed over the other, and had deteriorated in a sweating mess to the level of almost mimicking Q’s crouched-like-a-frog position across from him. The fact that Q was cute like that didn’t come into the equation at all. He leaned forward on his half of the sofa cushions (they were in Eliot’s receiving room in Castle Whitespire in Fillory, newly reconstructed after the swordsmanship tournament) to squint at Quentin’s cards: three sevens, ace-two-three-four of diamonds.

“Son-of-a-bitch.”

Quentin smirked. “Sore loser. No power in the ‘verse can stop me. Rematch?”

Eliot pursed his lips, choosing his words carefully. “Q, I am the High King of Fillory.”

“I- um. I know?” Quentin said slowly, unsure as to where he was going with this. His eyebrows quirked together oddly.

“Ergo, I am not bothered by los- by not winning a game. I am playing for amusement. I am not bothered by……by not winning. This is fun. Playing cards in a non-gambling context is _fun_,” he attempted to convince both Quentin and himself. The look on his face suggested that he would rather be committing suicide in his royal bath than losing to Quentin.

Q smirked again. “If you say so.”

Eliot huffed haughtily. “My honour is not being-”

“Thoroughly fucked?”

Eliot’s brain momentarily short-circuited. “Besmirched,” he corrected him after he’d recovered.

The left corner of Quentin’s mouth quirked up. Eliot refused to describe it as being cocky. Nope, no thinking about Q in the same sentence as the word cock. He wouldn’t allow his id the satisfaction of getting the better of him.

Quentin reshuffled the deck smoothly and started to deal out the next hand as Eliot took a large gulp of not-quite-champagne to fortify him. It didn’t taste half bad either, this Fillorian sparkling-wine-gingerale-shit. At least it kept him cool. If there was one thing Eliot missed about Earth besides good booze, it was air conditioning.

Seven cards. Ugh. The magic-symbolism-shit made Eliot ill. He actually thought he might literally throw up because of it. Always seven, the most magical number. Seven kingdoms, seven Horcruxes, seven golden keys. Definitely Quentin’s area, not his.

The small gesture of the shuffle looked complicated to Eliot. Faro? Was that what Quentin had called it? Usually Eliot just nodded along appropriately whenever Quentin was ranting on about magic or Fillory, and devoted his energies to thinking instead about how adorable he was (when he was enthusiastic he meant, but also just in general).

As much as the sound of Quentin winning made Eliot want to violently throttle him, he did find him very adorable when he was gloating. And he, High King Eliot Waugh, holder of the sole five-year master’s degree in Pining After Quentin, was of course the expert to call if ever one needed to know whether or not Quentin was being adorable. Determiner of Coldwater adorableness _par excellence_. (Eliot had long since accepted that his feelings were unwelcome and unreturned, and it was not sad OR pathetic to still be pining in spite of all of that. He was a fucking adult.) But Quentin was cute as _fuck_ when he was confident like this. It warmed Eliot to the place he might have called the cockles of his heart to watch Q act without overthinking everything like he normally did. Confident, sure-of-himself Quentin was someone Eliot could get used to, though of course he <strike>loved</strike> liked Stammering Mess Quentin and Fillory Expert Quentin and- just Q. And Quentin’s little stuttered attempts at trash talk were too fucking adorable. Eliot would have happily lost on purpose just to see Quentin look this triumphant when he won. Not that he needed to throw the game, since Quentin Makepeace Motherfucker-Bastard Coldwater was a goddamn card sharp.

“This is an easy game you know,” Eliot pointed out, picking up Quentin’s discarded four, before thinking better of it and putting it back again. “Kids can play it.”

“Yeah?” Q deftly took his turn too fast for Eliot to see what he’d done and gestured for Eliot to take his. “How come you’re on a royal losing streak then? Is it because I’m so very pretty? Because I’m just too pretty for Ember to let me lose?”

Eliot opened his mouth, then closed it again. “You’re referencing some geeky shit, aren’t you? Whatever. Just wanted you to know you’re not some sort of card genius. I am- uh, biding my time. Like a serpent, before it strikes.”

Q snorted. “You know it’s not Push, right? You’re not actually supposed to cheat.” Eliot had been subtly moving his right ring finger to switch the top card of the deck with the card he wanted, which was deep under the discard pile. He had thought it was a stealthy tactical manoeuvre. He was wrong.

“No one likes a stickler,” he muttered, making Quentin laugh again.

He took another swig from the bottle. He was fucked. Sure to lose. Going down down in an earlier round. And sure enough-

“_Aha!”_

What happened next is hard to describe objectively. There were three possible explanation of Eliot’s sudden change in behavior.

First, his self-control had finally given up and thrown in the towel. This was very plausible, as Eliot had been depriving it of both recreational drugs and decent drinks, as well as asking it to repress far many more emotions than was probably healthy <strike>(especially concerning Quentin).</strike>

Second, Eliot had wanted to wipe that self-satisfied smirk off Quentin’s face. Or maybe he’d just wanted him to shut up.

Whatever the reason, Eliot found himself setting down his cards, reaching to cup Quentin’s jaw in both of his hands, and pulled him in for a kiss.

Eliot caught a glimpse of Quentin making some sort of spastic hand gesture that scattered his cards all over the floor before closing his eyes again with a noise that might’ve been a laugh. The kiss was good. It was brief, but it was good. Eliot was pulling out all the stops in his expert kissing method, biting Q’s lower lip and touching their tongues together smoothly. After a moment or two he pulled away and leaned back against the sofa’s armrest, savouring the flustered look on Quentin’s face.

“Just wanted to shut you up,” Eliot said casually, choosing the simplest of the explanations available to him and deciding to laugh it off.

“Oh.”

Quentin’s tongue darted out to taste his lower lip, or perhaps that was just Eliot’s wishful thinking. He wasn’t looking at Eliot, and his shoulders were starting to resume their habitual hunch. He fidgeted himself into criss-cross-applesauce.

If Eliot hadn’t known better, he would’ve almost said Quentin looked disappointed. He frowned. “Look, I was out of line. It’s not like we haven’t done it before, it was totally casual, but sorry if I overstepped.”

“No- it’s okay, I- I was just-” Q exhaled heavily and ran both hands through his hair. “Never mind,” he mumbled. He executed some sort of spell to gather his cards back to the pack, dropped them again, then managed somehow to reassemble the deck. He shuffled them clumsily and dealt out the next hand again, apparently forgetting that they’d already only just started.

Eliot frowned. When he won the next round, he frowned again, harder. “Look, I said I was sorry. Didn’t mean to throw off your mojo,” he said glibly, while still trying to show Quentin that his apology was sincere. He was starting to really worry that he’d fucked up their homoerotic-friendship-thing, though of course fucking things up was what Eliot did best. It would hardly be a huge plot twist. The viewers wouldn’t be shocked, Eliot was acting like a giant prick.

“I shouldn’t have done that without your permission.” Eliot dealt out the next hand and slid Quentin’s cards to him across the couch.

Quentin glanced up at Eliot through his eyelashes as though trying to gauge his reaction, and tucked a loose strand of long hair behind his ear. “You always have my permission,” he said softly. He hid his face under the guise of examining his cards.

_Holyshit._

Eliot took in a breath of air, then let it out again. He deliberately set his cards aside again, and made a valiant effort to calm himself down.

He hesitated for a moment, then made a little knock-knock gesture with his knuckles on the back of Quentin’s cards. Quentin lowered them slowly. Eliot fought the urge to laugh at the ridiculous look on his face. It wasn’t funny.

“Always?” He asked simply. Quentin just nodded.

This time, Eliot felt Quentin shudder against him as their lips met. This time, Eliot took the time to savour the feeling of Quentin’s lips, Quentin’s tongue, sliding against his, Q’s hand sliding down Eliot’s chest and making Eliot’s heart stutter. This time, Eliot sucked on Quentin’s tongue possessively and just took in how close they were right now. This time, Quentin gripped Eliot’s expensive royal garments in sweaty hands as Eliot ran his hands through Quentin’s hair over and over and over again until he sighed against Eliot’s lips. It made Eliot want to only kiss Quentin and do nothing else for years, letting the world and magic and whatever else go to shit around them. Kissing Quentin was what he’d been built to do. Kissing Quentin was the eighth wonder of the world.

Eliot would never complain about anything, ever again (or at least for a couple of hours). He obviously had better luck than anybody on Earth, and for that matter, Fillory too.

**Author's Note:**

> Fun Fact: I wrote 1400 words, cut-pasted it, deleted the document, copied some links and realized like an idiot that I hadn't pasted the fic into the text box. After attempting to resuscitate it, I had to Retype. The. Whole. Thing. (Also I added shit. Idk why I lead with 'fun fact' this was not fun.)
> 
> I'm also thinking about writing a trans!Quentin fic, so lemme know your thoughts on that.
> 
> Comment/kudos to make me happy and let me know this doesn't suck! Thanks for reading!


End file.
